Hrmm, how crazy the last year has been. Regardless of the level of activity I should have posted something sooner, but I really just haven’t had the energy or drive to do much outside of work this past year. SO, I apologize to all my readers (whoever is left) and here are some updates.

First, I’m still working at Carfax and am past the 1 year mark now. It’s going pretty well, and I am in a slightly different group than where I started that has really challenged my abilities. I’ve been able to deal with everything from VMS to low level byte manipulation to performance tuning to threading issues – it’s been a fantastic ride thus far, and I’m looking forward to the future working for Carfax.

Aside from work, I’m still living in the same place, and am trying to get my truck paid off before purchasing a house. I came close to a few places earlier this year, but never saw anything that really caught my eye, and with the economy being unreliable, I’ve been pushing off the house purchase until I was sure I found something I wanted – I intend to stay around for a long while, so I don’t move fast on something like this. I’m still not sure whether I want to buy land and build, or just buy something already built with land. I’m definitely sure I want at least 10 acres of land though – I’ve started horse back riding this year, and it’s one of those things I’m loving, and intend to continue.

This segways nicely into other activities over the last year. I’ve not managed to take any major vacations, but I have managed to visit parks and other places locally pretty regularly. I’ve been to rock bridge a ton, my grandmothers place out in the country, finger lakes, and a few other places off and on. I’ve been horse back riding now for about 2 months (something like that I think, I’m losing track), and that’s keeping me pretty active.

Aside from horse back riding, my home life is interesting. For the first time in perhaps 8 years, I may not have a roommate shortly, as my brother is looking at going back into the military. It’s going to be an interesting switch for me, and I’m not 100% sure yet what I think of that. I’m still waiting to see what happens though, as nothing is confirmed as of this time. Malcolm is steadily getting older, and he’s losing his eye sight, and I’ve also noticed that he no longer jumps up on the bed like he used to, and overall just has slowed down immensely… It worries me a lot, but I’m doing my best to just enjoy the time I have with him.

In other news, it’s now been about 8 months since I quit smoking. That’s been a MAJOR improvement on my life and something I’m very glad I did. Other improvements and changes in my life, well, I’ve been eating better and not eating out so much, watching a lot less tv, and trying to read more, but that’s pretty normal stuff for me. One more … major? change is my views on religion and life.

Over the last year, and a lot of introspection, I’ve discovered that I’m very Catholic in MANY ways. I dated someone earlier this year, and I think I realized after dating her just how Catholic I was, in how I looked at so many things regarding my faith. My views on the saints, communion, love, marriage, birth control and so many other aspects has really been affected by my religious views. This fall, I’ve been doing my best to be more active in the church, and to really follow that path in my life.

There’s a whole lot of other small things I could relate, such as how I’ve been doing a number of DJ gigs, that I’ve been trying to clean my house every weekend and keep things neater, but overall, life is just that – life and it’s going and I’m doing my best to just keep living each day and praying for God’s guidance and direction.